Medical advancement

I think the greatest role technology has had in our lives is huge it has advanced the medical profession. From the time when doctors had no idea that bacteria caused infections, never washed their hands and where the most common treatment was almost bleeding people to death all the way up to modern day medicine the had been almost miraculous advances in medical technology.

Now we can watch a foetus grow in the womb from conception to birth, we can see in three dimensions via sound waves the new life and determine any medical problems. If need be those problems can even be operated on before the baby has been born.

It is from modern medical technology that a new ligament in the knee was finally recognised and bodily functions could be seen and analysed in real time. All in unprecedented detail. Even our thoughts could be followed in real time and while currently quite crude, those thoughts can visualised.

Surgery has gone from a dangerous, last resort affair where the wounds caused by opening the body from stem to stern left huge scars to a small incision for heart surgery leaving almost no trace.

These sorts of surgery obviously could not be done by human hands. The precision needed is too fine for our twitchy nervous system. Surgeons now operate robots which translate gross moves into fine sub-millimetre actions.

The ability to read our nervous systems signals has given us the ability to create prosthetics of almost magical powers and has even given life and feeling back to the dead limbs of spinal injuries.

This is not the end however, I would say that we are still in a technological infancy. Soon we will have technology that is as amazing to us as our current technology would seem to the bonesaws of ye grande olde dais.

Have you experienced the finest of modern medicine? If so I hope it all went well for you. Perhaps you would like to tell if your experiences in the comments below.

I've always been fascinated with graphics and wrote my first drawing program on the venerable apple ][e. After discovering the x86 IBM clones and wrangling my way into the computer industry I'm now immersed in work as a System Administrator, OS builder (linuxfromscratch) and general technohead.